This afternoon, a group of students barricaded themselves on the sixth floor of Eshelman Hall at UC Berkeley, reclaiming a building that has been designated for demolition and demanding that the Administration abandon plans to cut support for the recruitment and retention of students of color. At this point, a couple hundred supporters have gathered in lower Sproul Plaza, while the police have closed off the building. Those barricading the building are calling on supporters to gather at Eshelman in order to protect those inside and intensify the force of their resistance.

The demands:

We Demand that the Multicultural Student Development Offices be restored to their former structure by Vice Chancellor Gibor Basri. Countless students and the ASUC as an entity have voiced this opinion and received no changes.

We demand that the budget allocation of the multicultural student development offices be increased to meet the needs of their work.

We demand that none of the peaceful protesters in this occupation receive any punishment or repercussions for this activity.

We demand an increase in funding for the Recruitment and Retention Center to assist in their mission of increasing the enrollment of underrepresented minorities on campus.

An estimated six students began occupying Eshleman Hall Tuesday afternoon as part of an awareness campaign regarding the campus’s multicultural retention center and minority enrollment. Over 100 students, including Occupy Cal protesters and BAMN affiliates, stood outside the building chanting in support of the campaign. [...] Protesters in the crowd said there were at least two students inside who had chained themselves to the building by the neck. On Tuesday evening, campus spokesperson Claire Holmes said the administration does not currently have any plans to remove the protesters. [...] The protesters inside are purportedly from Raza Recruitment and Retention Center, a campus group that aims to increase Hispanic enrollment in higher education, and REACH!, which aims to serve Asians and Pacific Islanders on campus.

25 Comments

Well, good for them! Centers like that are important for helping students of color access higher education- especially first-generation students whose parents might not have the experience with the college system to guide them through it. Plus, in an increasingly demographically diverse society, we should be expanding multicultural initiatives to make them the norm, not retreating to Eurocentrism.

if a person has something to offer, talent, insight, ambition, critical thinking, intelligence, thats what counts. NOT skin color or race for tha sake of " diversity " of skin color or race. people of every race and ethnicity have all of the above. no need for the masquerade of affirmative action.

if they're so worthy than their grades and talents speak for them and will secure their acceptance .IF the only reason they are accepted is that they are non caucasian and not male , thats discrimination.

the civil rights act of 1964 as originally passed prohibits employment discrimination against any individual on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex. a later amendment, the civil rights act of 1991 added a " disparate impact provision", which allows a claim of discrimination to be established on the basis of disproportional results. the impossible situation here is that to avoid a disparate impact violation, employers might feel themselves obligated to engage in racial discrimination in order to achieve acceptable reults. the idea behind the disparate impact provision aded in 1991 was that equal opportunity can be measured only by equal results.. if equal opportunity is not enough then some form of unequal opportunity will be necessary to achieve equality in results. restrictions on the fredom of some would be the necessary condition for the advancement of others- those who came to be known in affirmative action parlance as " specially protected classes" or " preferred classes".

Because I remember the case & I remember the assertions made by the plaintiffs that it was not fair, And I recall the city could not defend the fairness of the test,evidenced by their capitulation in court and unwillingness to defend the test.

.in RICCI v DESTEFANO, decided in 2009, the supreme court ruled that a municipality could not discriminate against individuals on the basis of race in order to insulate itself against a claim of of disparate impact. the city of new haven , conn, held competitive examinations for promotions within its fire dept. even though the test had been professionally designed to eliminate racial and ethnic bias, all who scored high enough for promotion were white or hispanic. in order to avoid a disparate impact charge that would have been brought by black firefighters, the city discarded the exam results and did not promote any of the candidates. this disappointed those firefighters who had passed the exam. and they claimed disparate treatment under the civl rights act.the court in the RICCI decision attempted to avoid the intractable contradiction in the law by arguing that new haven had no "strong basis evidence" that it would have lost a disparate impact challenge and therefore its discrimination against the individuals who pased the exam violated the prohibition against racial treatment. the court , however, gave no credence to the argument that the equal protection guarantees of the civil rights act are at war with its disparate impact provisions.